Constructor output type, toOutput, legacy outPut & painter.output

Rendering does not depend on constructor type. Canvas, image, chart, scene, batch, and chain paths build raster data the same way and expose Buffer values (or structures containing .buffer). The constructor OutputFormat.type is consumed by await painter.toOutput(buffer) through bufferToPainterOutput. The older await painter.outPut(buffer) spelling remains as a deprecated compatibility alias and delegates to toOutput.

Most applications should keep new ApexPainter() with the default buffer output and use explicit painter.output.* helpers when another representation is needed.

#Optional constructor OutputFormat

1new ApexPainter({2  type?: 'buffer' | 'url' | 'blob' | 'base64' | 'dataURL' | 'arraybuffer'3});

Default: buffer.

#await painter.toOutput(results)

Input must be a non-empty Buffer, normally PNG bytes produced by Apexify.

Unsupported constructor output types reject with the allowed values.

save / saveMultiple are separate disk-output APIs and do not use constructor type.

##Legacy outPut alias

await painter.outPut(results) is retained for existing Apexify.js applications and returns the same result as toOutput. New code should use toOutput; outPut is deprecated rather than removed so the naming cleanup does not break established callers.

#painter.output

The explicit output facet provides:

1painter.output.dataURL(buffer)2painter.output.base64(buffer)3painter.output.blob(buffer)4painter.output.arrayBuffer(buffer)5await painter.output.url(buffer, credentials?)

These helpers ignore constructor type.

1import { ApexPainter } from 'apexify.js';2 3const painter = new ApexPainter();4const { buffer } = await painter.createCanvas({5  width: 64,6  height: 64,7  colorBg: '#111827',8});9 10const converted = await painter.toOutput(buffer);11const dataUrl = painter.output.dataURL(buffer);12const b64 = painter.output.base64(buffer);13const bytes = painter.output.arrayBuffer(buffer);

##Base64 vs data URL

These are deliberately different contracts:

1painter.output.base64(buffer);  // "iVBORw0KGgo..."2painter.output.dataURL(buffer); // "data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgo..."

Do not strip or add prefixes manually unless another API explicitly requires that representation.

##Imgur credentials

Apexify contains no embedded Imgur credentials. painter.output.url() requires either caller-supplied credentials or the documented environment variables:

• IMGUR_CLIENT_ID
• IMGUR_CLIENT_SECRET
• IMGUR_ACCESS_TOKEN
• IMGUR_REFRESH_TOKEN

If required credentials are absent, the call rejects before an upload request is attempted. Credentials are not logged by Apexify.

#Disk save behavior

save and saveMultiple use asynchronous filesystem operations. With overwrite: false, filename collision handling uses exclusive file creation so concurrent writers cannot silently overwrite the same path. A collision advances to a suffixed filename such as image_1.png.

#Practical takeaway